Friday, May 08, 2015

Appellate Court Is First to Rule on the Issue

Appellate Court Is First to Rule on the Issue

May 7, 2015

NEW YORK – In a landmark decision, a federal appeals court
unanimously ruled today that the NSA’s phone-records surveillance
program is unlawful.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals held that the statute the
government is relying on to justify the bulk collection of phone records
– Section 215 of the Patriot Act – does not permit the gathering of
Americans’ sensitive information on such a massive scale. The case was
filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil
Liberties Union in June 2013, immediately after NSA whistleblower Edward
Snowden disclosed the existence of the program.

“The current reform proposals from Congress look anemic in light of
the serious issues raised by the Second Circuit,” said Anthony D.
Romero, executive director of the ACLU. “Congress needs to up its reform
game if it’s going to address the court’s concerns.”

The government had argued in the case, ACLU v. Clapper, that
the court should not consider the lawfulness of the program at all,
arguing that the ACLU lacked “standing” to challenge the surveillance
and that Congress had “precluded” judicial review except by the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court, which meets in secret, rarely
publishes its decisions, and generally hears argument only from the
government. Today’s decision rejects those arguments.

The ruling aligns with the lower court decision in a similar lawsuit in Washington, Klayman v. Obama,
in which U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon found the NSA program to
be likely unconstitutional. The government’s appeal of that case was
argued on November 4. Another challenge to the phone-records program was
argued before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on December 4.

“This decision is a resounding victory for the rule of law,” said
ACLU Staff Attorney Alex Abdo, who argued the case before the
three-judge panel in September. “For years, the government secretly
spied on millions of innocent Americans based on a shockingly broad
interpretation of its authority. The court rightly rejected the
government’s theory that it may stockpile information on all of us in
case that information proves useful in the future. Mass surveillance
does not make us any safer, and it is fundamentally incompatible with
the privacy necessary in a free society.”

The ACLU is a customer of Verizon Business Network Services, which,
as revealed in The Guardian, received a secret order from the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court compelling the company to turn over “on
an ongoing daily basis” phone call details such as whom calls are placed
to and from, and when those calls are made. The lawsuit argued that the
government’s blanket seizure of the ACLU’s phone records compromises
the organization’s ability to carry out its work and to engage in
legitimate communications with clients, journalists, advocacy partners,
whistleblowers, and others.

“This ruling focuses on the phone-records program, but it has far
broader significance, because the same defective legal theory that
underlies this program underlies many of the government’s other
mass-surveillance programs,” said Jameel Jaffer, ACLU deputy legal
director and lead counsel in the case. “The ruling warrants a
reconsideration of all of those programs, and it underscores once again
the need for truly systemic reform.”

The court wrote in its opinion, “If the government is correct, it
could use Section 215 to collect and store in bulk any other existing
metadata available anywhere in the private sector, including metadata
associated with financial records, medical records, and electronic
communications (including e‐mail and social media information) relating
to all Americans. Such expansive development of government repositories
of formerly private records would be an unprecedented contraction of the
privacy expectations of all Americans.”

The attorneys on the case are Jaffer and Abdo along with Brett Max
Kaufman and Patrick Toomey of the ACLU, and Arthur N. Eisenberg and
Christopher T. Dunn of the NYCLU.

About Me

We do not open attachments. Stop e-mailing them. Threats and abusive e-mail are not covered by any privacy rule. This isn't to the reporters at a certain paper (keep 'em coming, they are funny). This is for the likes of failed comics who think they can threaten via e-mails and then whine, "E-mails are supposed to be private." E-mail threats will be turned over to the FBI and they will be noted here with the names and anything I feel like quoting.
This also applies to anyone writing to complain about a friend of mine. That's not why the public account exists.